How Reviewia CEO Arijit Bose grew Reviewia to $18.2K revenue and 5 customers in 2024.

Guys review via review.com is a site for candidates to leave feedback on the interviews they've done at companies he's hoping if he builds enough reviews that companies will then come on and pay a B2B fee he's got five of them paying 50 bucks a month right now so 250 a month in Revenue as they scale this 950 total reviews on the site he pays the bills right now with a Consulting business so this is this beautiful agency plus SAS model that we like and we see it a lot we'll see what RJ it does next hey folks my guest today is Irish at Bose he is a Serial entrepreneur in the HR on HR Tech space was nine years of experience running startups a total of 19 years professional experience with his first 10 years in transformation business Consulting and Business Development roles now he's building review dot Co a candidate experience and recruitment analytics SAS RG you ready to take us to the top yep all right this is a tough space tell me what customers are paying you for give me a customer case study so uh candidate experience is kind of an area which is untapped until now you know the way we are going uh to Market nobody has gone to Market like that when it comes to giving insights into what causes a bad candidate experience and how big a problem that is it is kind of a problem which is being under the carpet for a long time and now basically we are giving the platform to candidates at one end to to voice their concerns to voice their experience and translating it into a very useful uh manner for employers to get some actionable insights into what would it take for them to improve their candidate experience and for that matter improve some of the key recruitment metrics because Canada and so RG what are customers paying on average to use this technology per month on average okay uh so that's about 600 annual subscription as of now annual subscription okay and about how many customers do you have today uh we in total on the B2B side we have 20 customers out of which five are paying customers so we have some customers on trial as well so five customers paying 50 bucks a month or 600 a year that means you're doing about what is it 250 per month right now in Revenue that is correct and where were you exactly one year ago zero we were zero yeah in fact we started making revenues about six months back interesting okay so you launched uh your pricing it sounds like your first customer and sometime in January or February of 2023 actually a little earlier about November all right we launched and then it had a cycling of course how long were you writing code and building a platform before your first customer how many months uh so we have a B2B side as well uh you know we got the MVP going uh about two years back and we collected more and more reviews from the candidates and once we had some initial data points going is when we went to Market on the employer side to offer them these insights 2021 you launched a review site a candidate collection review like Glassdoor almost right correct correct and what's that website Glassdoor but that's called review vr.com and Glassdoor is focused on employee experience essentially and we are a pure candidate experience platform okay just to be clear when I go to review via DOT Co yeah search reviews I mean search reviews by company I mean this is what Glassdoor search reviews by company name yes but the reviews are by candidates and not by employees that's the fundamental difference between glasses and us I see I see okay that makes sense got it okay got it so so you launched this site two years ago how many reviews have you collected since launch close to 950. I love now as we speak okay that's not I mean that's not enough over two years to have like a critical mass well why don't you have you know a million reviews collected see we had a bootstrapped uh business we haven't raised it yeah but I mean there's plenty of bootstrap Founders that have big numbers we don't as of now because it's a new category you know we're a category Creator uh adoption obviously will take time and the fact that people don't know enough about review via is what is coming in the way of oh but that's your job is to get them to know about it right how are you getting attention how are you signing up customers how are you getting new reviews from candidates so we run uh you know some contests from time to time these are small ticket contests across Instagram across LinkedIn we also do a lot of organic content building so that our scores on Google actually come up to be you know High when it comes to relevant searches for reviews uh for you know tools for which are relevant for candidate persona so yeah so the growth has been slow uh because we you know we have limited uh funds to basically scale at this point yeah but already sorry I I just it drives me crazy when people say we're not bigger because we didn't raise enough money uh there are plenty of bootstrap Founders that use their creativity to win Let me Give an example you're clearly spending a lot of energy optimizing for the keyword resume templates it's in your footer you have a whole landing page for it but when I go search pre-resume templates in Google you're choosing a very competitive keyword where others are just crushing you I mean grammarly resume.io resume.com canva zetty uh indeed I mean why go after a keyword that you know is really hard to win why not come up with a more creative keyword that you know just your candidates are looking for no I don't have the answers I'm asking why you made the decision uh resume templates is something which caters to the Persona of uh of users that we want to come on our website because typically these are people who are looking for jobs they're interviewing they would want to know about companies they want to post reviews and this is something which will be relevant for them as a tool to kind of get them to visit our website but how do they find it yeah so that's the game right that's the SEO game that we're trying to you know find the answers to oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for evaluation this year now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SAS business so the reason you're going to see three or four different evaluations inside of your founder path dashboard this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SAS company you're going to get a different valuation a VC is going to pay a different valuation private Equity Firm is different if you're going to do a minority sale that's different and if you sell the whole business that's a different valuation you can see all those when I hover over here here right so the teal is what a VC would pay yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright now what's cool about this is this is not built off random data again you guys hear these interviews on YouTube all these datas are built from real-time valuation data points Founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed around 3.7 raise they sold 22 percent of their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to see companies that have sold the whole business well here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round well go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down what they raised what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold there's never been a larger data set of SAS valuation than what you can get now inside of founder path and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second but if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash evaluations or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products click on get your valuation here and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl again all that valuation data live right inside the platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview well but but that's that's where I'm trying to uncover your unique Advantage do you have some unique Advantage where you know how to outrank these bigger competitors uh not on the resume templates because that's like a nice to have offering that's not the core offering of our website the core offering is candidate experience review and uh you know again candidate experience is also a keyword where we are not scoring very high but eventually we would want to and that's why we are generating enough content around hiring and candidate on the blog section so on you know every week we post at least one blog to generate sufficient relevant content which is organic but how why why do you why have you made the decision that you as a small startup are going to put out more blog content than Wonderlic career plug workable and zabby and indeed in Glassdoor who rank for the words candidate experience review aren't you picking a board game that you know from the start you cannot win I mean how are you going to build an army of content writers put out more content in these folks also I don't disagree that we can't win this you know while there are bigger players who might be gunning for the keyword but you know the aspect which they don't really uh deliver on is the B2B side as well you know driving value on the employer side is also one side that we're investing on so that we get more and more employers to drive reviews for their candidates on the platform so it is just not the organic keyword game which obviously will take time and obviously we don't have all the answers like uh you know the questions what's your most successful attention getting strategy is it SEO and if so what is the keyword that brings you the most traffic monthly most successful attention getting strategy uh one of them is SEO the relevant keyword which is doing really well is salary calculator enhanced salary calculator okay in what in hand salary calculator so this is a typical terminology that people use in India it's basically your take home paycheck yeah that see that's more interesting because like I didn't even know that was a keyword to compete on because I I'm not in your ICP and I'm not an Indian I don't even know that in hand salary calculator is a thing so okay so that's a keyword that you know if you rank well for that that's going to be good at attracting your customers perfect do you rank well for it yes we were earlier on the first page uh for this on Google right now we are ranking I think lower on the first page or maybe second page uh topper top two or three searches is this your number one customer acquisition strategy ah no it is not the other is to drive you know incentivized contests from time to time to drive reviews because at the end of the day what we want is not just the people to use the tools but also engage in writing reviews so we uh you know run focused contents uh contests at our target audience across LinkedIn across Instagram uh saying that okay if you have interviewed why don't you post a review and we'll do a lucky draw at the end of the month and if you win we'll offer you a voucher and stuff like that I mean but to get big in the space or even just to generate profits and you know five million revenue and a million in profits I mean you can have them you've got to have in the millions of reviews not 925 over the past two years so these contests aren't working at least in the numbers I mean would you agree with that statement and if so what are you testing yeah so as I said you know that b2c is one strategy B2B is the other which is our monetizing strategy right now and the customers that we are going after there are large Enterprises who will say okay I will come on your platform only when you have 1000 reviews of my company uh so we are targeting young organizations who have a struggle in attracting right kind of talent they don't know how to build credibility so we're saying hey come on our platform use our platform to to understand what your candidates are saying about you so it's like the push that they give to their candidates to put in a review use that uh you know in the form of analytics and insights and ensure because you're a Founder you're Nimble you know you can nip it in the bud when there are issues which show up it gives you greater credibility okay and you get clear visibility of how you're doing as an employer when it comes to your recruitment processes so that's the SAS solution that we're selling right now uh we've gone to Market in the last six months and that's the revenue generating uh Channel or offering for us as of now so total revenue though again monthly right now is about 200 300 bucks a month is that right yes and what's the team size today how many folks full-time is just me and my business partner which is also my wife ah who owns more Equity you are her uh it doesn't matter what is on paper she's always going to want more right ah very good smart and you must I bet you've been married a long time yes yes so we've been married for 13 years we've been dating five years before that so 18 years of partnership there you go folks the secret to life if you're a Founder listening you know I stay married a long time there you go spouse always is in control even if they own one percent less Equity that's how it works all right now you've bootstrapped rajeet right okay very good any plans to raise or you want to stay bootstrapping no we are planning to raise uh now because what we've realized is we need some funds to basically you know generate more and more Awareness on the b2c side and we don't look to monetize it anytime soon so they will be in you know Investments required how are you supporting yourself right now I mean 250 bucks a month for the past two years is not enough for you guys to put food on the table no absolutely not so we run so the reason we've kind of built this is because we've been in this business for nine years and we run a consulting firm uh in the recruitment space which kind of pays the bills and also is paying for this business as of now I see I see don't you have to kill the Consulting business so that you have to make the software work are we don't really think that is important because uh you know what it allows us to do is it allows us to remain close to the candidate as well as the customer so and I think there's a lot of business context which is required which is missing a lot of product entrepreneurs uh so I don't think necessarily that's what it is but yeah obviously once it kind of becomes more uh you know Revenue generating Etc uh then we gradually trans you know plan to transition more uh and more on this and then figure out ways to kind of uh you know manage the other business makes sense RG we're at a time let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite book uh a favorite book would be Atomic habits number two is there a CEO you're following or studying uh I love read Hastings number three what's your favorite online tool for building review um I haven't built it basically I got it built by a friend or just a tool that you use a lot an online tool you use a lot as a CEO canva number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night eight hours and we know you're married any kids yes one daughter who's nine that's great okay and what's your uh how old are you I'm about to turn 42 on the 27th of this month happy early birthday last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. that it's okay to make mistakes and learn from them that's the only way to learn fast Guys review via review.com is a site for candidates to leave feedback on the interviews they've done at companies he's hoping if he builds enough reviews that companies will then come on and pay a B2B fee he's got five of them paying 50 bucks a month right now so 250 a month in Revenue as they scale this 950 total reviews on this site he pays the bills right now with a Consulting business so this is this beautiful agency plus SAS model that we like and we see it a lot we'll see what RJ does next RG thanks for taking us to the top thank you so much appreciate this air time with you Nathan one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm Central it's called Shark Tank for SAS we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry buyers they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back-end dashboards their expenses their revenue our poo CAC LTV you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every Thursday 1 p.m Central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on YouTube every day at 2 p.m Central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the Subscribe button below here on YouTube the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SAS World whether it's an acquisition a big fundraise a big sale a big profitability statement or something else I don't want you to miss it additionally if you want to take this conversation deeper and further we have by far the largest private slack Community for B2B SAS Founders you want to get in there we've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing you can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying sign up for that at nathanlacka.com forward slash slack in the meantime I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube I'll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it click the thumbs up we get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows but I do it so that we can all learn we have to counter those people we got to push them away click the thumbs up below to 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